Enter Spinning Stars Quilt.
I've designed this new free pattern for my Loulouthi fabrics, which you can grab off my MAKE page, and we've prepared kits over here for each of the palettes. This one above is a throw size, made up of 9 blocks, and from the Juliana palette.
I hand tied the throw with a pretty aqua pearl cotton, at every corner and every center of each block. Hand tying is fun for me, quicker than hand quilting and I like the fuzzy little knots poking up across the surface of the patchwork. Sort of silly almost, but still pulled together. I aspire to be just like a hand tied quilt. (Anyway, YES, I know! Where are those stinkin' thread kits? I'm twiddling my thumbs along with some of you, but I was told end of June, so it should really be any day now.)
While I do love the messy, mix-y , patch-y of a quilt, I decided to play around with some solids too. Its amazing how different these quilts with the solid bands are. And how the solid influences the feel and color story of the whole thing. This solid aqua is paired with fabrics from the Eleni palette. I also backed this one with voile, which makes your needle just sink right in beautifully if you are handquilting, and who wouldn't want a layer of that against you on a cool night? So soft. It was such a push to get each of these finished before market, so I had some help from my pal Brittney to piece two of them (thanks Britt!). And while its not really recommended to bind up the edges before you quilt the layers together, market will push you into just that kind of corner.
So it came along just like this, safely pinned, and waiting to have the stitching realized (as it still waits). The main reason I introduced solids to these is to have some open ground to feature hand stitching. So on the above I'm a little torn between tying and stitching. Hmm. Every quilt I design is like a new friendship, and you learn something. What I've learned from this one, is that I gravitate towards blocks that have a center, as do these pie shapes, and so the background stars. There is so much power play that can happen between the two, depending on how the color and depth arrangement gets fooled with, that you can really go on and on. Which is just the point to all this I believe.
And I did-go on, and on! This is a crib size version from the Isabela palette, and I love it! So fun to hand stitch in playful primaries.
And extremely enjoyable to allow the background stars to be really graphic, using high contrast colors from the gold and blue. I think I like this poppy-ness partly because its a small-scale, playful quilt.
I put a solid voile on the back of this one, to give various hues of stitching center stage.
Spinning Stars. I hope you enjoy it! I had no idea when I was drawing it up a few months ago that it would be such a summery, starry tie-in to the upcoming holiday. Hooray.
Sparkley wishes, and lots of love, AM